DSE assessments for small businesses: what UK law actually requires

If you employ anyone who spends a good part of their day at a screen, you have legal duties under the Health and Safety (Display Screen Equipment) Regulations 1992. Those duties apply whether you have three employees or three thousand. There is no small business exemption, no headcount threshold, and no version of the rules that lets you skip it because everyone works from home.

The good news is that the duties are narrower and more practical than their reputation suggests, and you can meet most of them for nothing.

What the regulations cover

Display screen equipment means any alphanumeric or graphic display screen, whatever technology sits behind it. Desktops, laptops, tablets used for work, screens in vehicles, screens in control rooms. The definition is deliberately broad so it does not date.

The duties attach to people the regulations call users: employees who habitually use DSE as a significant part of their normal work. There is no statutory hour threshold, which trips a lot of employers up. HSE guidance points at people who normally use a screen for continuous spells of an hour or more, use it more or less daily, need to transfer information quickly to or from the screen, or need high concentration while doing so.

Duty one: assess the workstation

Regulation 2 requires a suitable and sufficient analysis of every workstation used by a DSE user, to assess the health and safety risks. It does not say who has to carry it out, and it does not require a consultant.

A self-assessment completed by a trained user is a recognised way of meeting this, and it is what most UK employers use. The two conditions are that the assessment is thorough enough to surface real risks, and that somebody in the business reviews it and acts on what it says.

Duty two: reduce the risks you find

This is the duty that actually matters, and the one small businesses most often miss. Identifying a risk is not compliance. Reducing it is.

Duty three: the Schedule 1 minimums

Schedule 1 sets out minimum requirements for the workstation itself. Most are common sense once you read them:

Screen

Clear and stable image, adjustable brightness and contrast, tilts and swivels easily, free of glare and reflections.

Keyboard

Separate from the screen and tiltable, with space in front to rest the hands, and legible key symbols.

Work surface

Large enough, low-reflectance, allows flexible arrangement of equipment, with a document holder where needed.

Chair

Stable, allows easy movement, adjustable in seat height and backrest height and tilt. A footrest on request.

Space

Enough room to change position and vary movements.

Lighting

Satisfactory, with appropriate contrast between screen and surroundings, and glare prevented.

Environment

Noise, heat and humidity kept at levels that do not distract or cause discomfort.

Software

Suitable for the task, easy to use, and responding at a speed suited to the user.

One part of the software requirement surprises people: you must not use software to check a user’s quantity or quality of output without their knowledge. Silent productivity monitoring of DSE users is specifically out of bounds.

Duty four: plan breaks into the work

Regulation 4 requires you to plan DSE work so it is periodically interrupted by breaks or changes of activity. There is no prescribed schedule, and the regulations deliberately avoid one.

The guidance is consistent on the shape of it: short and frequent beats long and occasional. Roughly five minutes away from the screen every hour does more good than twenty minutes every three. Breaks should be taken before fatigue sets in, not as a remedy for it.

Duty five: eye tests

Under regulation 5, a DSE user who asks for an eye and eyesight test is entitled to one at your expense, and to repeat tests at appropriate intervals afterwards.

If the test shows the person needs glasses specifically for the screen distance, you have to pay for a basic pair. You do not have to fund a general prescription, and you do not have to pay for designer frames. A basic pair that does the job is the standard.

Duty six: training and information

Regulations 6 and 7 require health and safety training on the workstation before someone uses it, repeated when the workstation is substantially modified, plus information about the assessment, the measures you have taken, and their entitlement to eye tests and breaks.

A good assessment tool does a lot of this work for you, because explaining why a finding matters is training. It does not replace telling people what their entitlements are.

What it costs to comply

Less than most small employers assume. The assessment itself can be free. The most common fixes are adjustments rather than purchases: lowering armrests, raising a chair, moving a mouse closer, turning a desk away from a window.

Where equipment is genuinely needed, the items that resolve most findings are inexpensive. A laptop stand, a separate keyboard and mouse, and a footrest will between them fix the majority of home-working problems for well under a hundred pounds a head.

Where small businesses go wrong

1. 1Assuming the rules are for big companies. They are not.
2. 2Assessing office desks and ignoring home setups.
3. 3Treating the assessment as the deliverable, rather than the changes it prompts.
4. 4Keeping no record, then having nothing to show when asked.
5. 5Never repeating it, so the record ages out and no longer describes how anyone works.